I have several old laptops that could live a good life of xterminals. Unfortunately, some don't have hard drives, most have memory less than 64MB, and one is a 486 with 4MB. All can use a pcmcia ethernet card.
What do most people do with these? Are there distributions catering to these or do I have to build them myself?
I'd hate throw them away. They use so little power, have well designed hardware, and look nice.
--- Duane Attaway dattawaykclug@dattaway.org wrote:
I have several old laptops that could live a good life of xterminals.
Unfortunately, some don't have hard drives,
Try these floppy-based Linux distributions:
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/linux/linux-distrib-small.html
most have memory less than 64MB, and one is a 486 with 4MB. All can use a pcmcia ethernet card.
What do most people do with these? Are there distributions catering to these or do I have to build them myself?
Slackware and Debian both install in very little RAM and have a text mode installer. Slackware 7.1 even allows you to install most of the console Linux packages using floppies.
Or if you aren't going to be doing anything with them for a few months, you could always run Gentoo's installer now and start using them in February. :)
I'd hate throw them away. They use so little power, have well designed hardware, and look nice.
I forget the link, but someone has been using old 386/486 laptops as LCD "digital photo frames".
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On Thursday 02 December 2004 05:47 am, Duane Attaway wrote:
I have several old laptops that could live a good life of xterminals. Unfortunately, some don't have hard drives, most have memory less than 64MB, and one is a 486 with 4MB. All can use a pcmcia ethernet card.
The problem I've encountered with this idea is that Xwindows itself is pretty resource intensive, and many of the older systems have video cards that don't have Linux drivers. At best, you may get 640x480x16 colors. You can off-load most of the work to the server (talk to the Lumensoft guys), but you still have to get a basic Xwindows setup going. 4M of RAM is going to be a distinct challange.
If you _do_ succeed, a writeup would be great - maybe we can post it to the web page!
Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
The problem I've encountered with this idea is that Xwindows itself is pretty resource intensive, and many of the older systems have video cards that don't have Linux drivers. At best, you may get 640x480x16 colors. You can off-load most of the work to the server (talk to the Lumensoft guys), but you still have to get a basic Xwindows setup going. 4M of RAM is going to be a distinct challange.
If you _do_ succeed, a writeup would be great - maybe we can post it to the web page!
Are there any VNC clients that can use the console directly? If so, you could run your X11 server remotely.
I think the laptops would make excellent SOHO router/firewall/access points. Just add PCMCIA interfaces and you have a low-cost, low-power device with its own battery backup.
Bearing in mind that the older laptops don't have CardBus slots and its getting harder to find older non-Cardbus PCMCIA NICs.
--- Gerald Combs gerald@ethereal.com wrote:
I think the laptops would make excellent SOHO router/firewall/access points. Just add PCMCIA interfaces and you have a low-cost, low-power device with its own battery backup.
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Thanks everyone, great ideas! I forgot all about the Linux Terminal Server Project. This looks very promising.
Now if I can find a use for the good old 386...
-
Duane Attaway -
Gerald Combs -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Leo Mauler